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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020
FIRST EDITION
© Gill Sims 2020
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2020
Cover illustration © Tom Gauld/Heart Agency
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008358556
Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780008358570
Version: 2020-09-08
Contents
1 Cover
2 Title Page
3 Copyright
4 Contents
5 Note to Readers
6 Dedication
7 JANUARY
8 FEBRUARY
9 MARCH
10 APRIL
11 MAY
12 JUNE
13 JULY
14 AUGUST
15 SEPTEMBER
16 DECEMBER
17 Acknowledgements
18 By the Same Author
19 About the Publisher
LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter
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Note to Readers
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008358556
Dedication
To Pauline
I told you it would be fine.
Friday, 25 January
I finished my tea and put the cup in the dishwasher. Despite a rather sleepless night, plagued with terrifying dreams of out-of-control clown cars careering towards me at speed, I was quite pleased with how very organised I’d been this morning – up and dressed, dogs walked and fed, and my precious moppets roused from their pits and nutritious breakfasts refused by them. I’d even found time to spend five minutes furtively perusing the Daily Mail’s Sidebar of Shame over a second cup of tea, while wondering if I should try ‘flaunting my pins’ to see if that could get me a new boyfriend, or perhaps I’d be better off ‘showcasing my curves’, or, better yet, I could give up rotting my brain with such nonsense before I found myself watching Good Morning Britain and agreeing with Piers Morgan.
This was the sort of morning I used to dream of when I was trying to shovel Weetabix down recalcitrant toddlers, who were more focused on trying to get Weetabix on the ceiling than in their mouths (do you have any idea how hard it is to try to chip dried-on Weetabix off a ceiling? It’s worse than trying to get fucking Artex off). Or the sort of morning that seemed impossible when I was trying to jam shoes onto the feet of a child who had ‘forgotten’ how to put on their shoes, while arguing with the other child about why, yes, they did have to wear trousers to nursery and could not in fact just waltz in there bare-arsed, no matter how much Rastamouse they’d been watching.
Of course, my mornings are not usually like this. They usually still involve a fair amount of shouting things like ‘I DON’T KNOW WHERE YOUR PE KIT IS, YOU NEED TO FIND IT YOURSELF!’ and ‘NO, standing in the middle of the room, giving a cursory glance around you and claiming you still can’t find it IS NOT ACTUALLY LOOKING FOR IT!’ and muttering dark curses as I attempt to log into ParentPay to fork over yet more money.
However, I’d been super organised last night, having made them pack their bags, including finding PE kit and art supplies, because I was determined there would be no stress, no shouting, no aggravation, for all would be calm and serene for Jane’s sake, because today was her driving test, so she needed a peaceful environment to enable her to stay focused and able to concentrate. I felt a tiny bit smug at how successful I’d been in creating this.
I gathered up my keys, coat and handbag, said goodbye to the dogs, and called upstairs to Jane that it was time to go.
Twenty minutes later, I was still yelling up the stairs, with no response from Jane. I’d been upstairs and banged on her door and got some kind of muffled snort, I’d issued grave threats about how she needed to be downstairs in ONE MINUTE or I was going without her (somewhat pointless, as why would I go to her driving test without her?), and here I still was, now getting slightly hoarse.
‘Jane! JANE! Jane, hurry up! We’re going to be late! Jane, can you hear me? JANE! Are you listening? For Christ’s sake, Jane, just get down here now, we need to GO!’
Peter stuck his head out of his bedroom door. ‘Mum, can you, like, stop shouting, yeah? I’m on the Xbox and all my friends can hear you? It’s like, really embarrassing?’
‘Well, can you go and tell your sister that we need to leave now, please?’
‘Not really, Mum, I’m like, totally in the middle of a game here!’ said Peter in horror, clamping his headphones on again and retreating back to his room and whatever awful, mind-numbing computer game he was frying his vulnerable teenage synapses with now.
‘Peter!’ I yelled after him. ‘PETER! Get off that computer and get ready for school, you’re going to be late. I haven’t got time to take you to the bus stop, you’ll have to walk! Peter! Did you hear me?’
A grunting sound was emitted from Peter’s room, which could mean anything from he was agreeing he’d heard me and would get ready, to being some teenage-boy communication code he was grunting down the internet to his friends, to the grunt being the noise the computer made when he murdered a prostitute. However, given that Peter is now several inches taller than me, I can’t physically drag him off the computer, and can only issue dire threats and occasionally change the Wi-Fi password to make him do as he is told.
‘JANE!’ I bellowed again, wondering how many days, months or indeed years of my life I’d spent at the bottom of the stairs, howling fruitlessly for my beloved offspring to emerge from their lairs and leave the house. It would probably be a really depressing statistic, like the number of weeks you spend on the toilet in a lifetime, though I feel that figure about time on the toilet should not be given as an average, but instead broken down into how much time men spend on the toilet compared with women, because I still cannot comprehend how the male digestive system is so different to a female one that they need to spend approximately fifteen times as long in the loo. I suppose at least I can take comfort from this by assuming that next time I see something that claims we spend 213 days of our life just pooing, that this statistic is vastly skewed and in fact women probably spend about three days of their entire lives having brisk, efficient poos, and men spend eleventy fucking billion years on the bog, having their many multiple and protracted Important Daily Shits.
I was roused from this contemplation by Jane FINALLY slamming her bedroom door and sauntering down the stairs.
‘At last!’ I said. ‘What have you been doing all this time?’
‘Er, curling my hair, obvs,’ said Jane scathingly.
‘Of course,’ I sighed. How foolish of me to think that there was any occasion in life that might take precedence over Jane’s all-encompassing devotion to the Grand Altar of GHDs.
‘Right, come on, we’ll be late!’ I said again.
‘Like, just chill, Mum!’ said Jane. ‘Why are you always so stressy? It’s not good for you, you know. You’ll end up having a heart attack. And anyway, we’ve got plenty of time!’
‘No, we don’t!’
‘Well, I’ll just drive faster on the way there, it’ll be fine.’
‘Jane, no, that is not how it works. You can’t get done for speeding on the way to your driving test! Apart from anything else, I’ll get points too for being the responsible driver, and you’ll be uninsurable if you’ve got a speeding ticket on a provisional licence.’
‘If you’re talking about me getting my own insurance, does that mean you’re going to buy me a car if I pass?’ demanded Jane.
‘What? No! That’s not what I said.’
‘Well, what does it matter then, if you’re not even going to buy me a car? How am I going to get to school if you don’t buy me a car?’
‘On the bus! Like you have for the last six years,’ I pointed out. ‘Anyway, this is entirely academic as you haven’t passed your test yet, and you won’t unless we go now, because you’ll be late!’
Jane finally got into the car with another stroppy toss of beautifully waved hair, and we set off for the test centre, me in the passenger seat, desperately clutching the door handle with white knuckles and trying not to gasp in terror at every junction, nor to stress Jane out too much by screaming ‘BRAKE! BRAKE!’ every time I saw a car in front or ‘INDICATE! For fuck’s sake, INDICATE!’
I’m no longer allowed to chant ‘Mirror, signal, manoeuvre’ at her before she moves off, even though it’s the only thing I can remember from my own driving lessons, as we had a rather nasty row about that on the day she pointed out to me that I rarely bother with mirror, signal, manoeuvre myself, which was why I once had a bijou tête-à-tête with a neighbour’s car (‘bijou tête-à-tête’ is my phrase for it; Jane insists on referring to it as ‘When You Crashed the Car Again, MOTHER!’).
We finally arrived at the test centre, Jane having only stalled twice at traffic lights on the way. This was actually Jane’s second attempt at passing her test. After sailing through her theory test with flying colours, and even nailing the hazard perception section (surprising, given her lack of perception of any hazards when actually driving), she’d insisted on sitting her practical test shortly afterwards, only for it to end in a storm of tears and recriminations and wails of it ‘Not being fair’ when a trembling examiner returned her to the test centre early, Jane having attempted to go around a roundabout in the wrong direction, something Jane insisted ‘could have happened to anyone!’
I still had reservations about Jane really being ready to sit her test, based on the driving skills she’d so far demonstrated while out ‘practising’ with me (I’d been carefully picking roundabout-free routes), but her instructor apparently thought she was good to go. So who was I to argue, especially since it would save me forking out the GDP of Luxembourg on a weekly basis for lessons, as well as enduring the white-knuckle rides of the practice sessions in my car while I desperately prayed to the God of Gearboxes (if there was such a thing? Maybe it’s Edd China, with his lovely big hands) to save my poor gears from their daily grinding. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was fear for his own gearbox and a desire to be free of Jane’s eyerolls and sarcasm that had led to her instructor’s keenness to put her in for the test.
I couldn’t even consult Simon, Jane’s father and my ex-husband, about his opinion on whether she was ready or not, because during her one and only practice session with him, Jane had done an emergency stop after a mile and got out of the car and walked home, declaring she was never driving anywhere with him again because he was such an annoying backseat driver. In fairness to Jane, I’d once done the same, only luckily I’d been able to drive too at the time, so I kicked Simon out and made him walk home, because he really is a desperately annoying passenger, his right foot constantly pumping the air, as it searches for the non-existent brake, and hissed intakes of breath every thirty seconds at some perceived ‘near miss’, or his favourite, ‘There’s a vehicle ahead, Ellen, are you aware of the vehicle ahead, you need to slow down now, Ellen, VEHICLE ahead!’ To be honest, sometimes it astounds me that I didn’t divorce Simon years before I actually did, although at least he eased off on the passenger prickdom after he had to walk four miles home in the rain.
Unfortunately, Jane had the same examiner as on her previous test, and I did notice that the poor man visibly blanched at the sight of her. Nothing daunted Jane, however, and she merrily skipped off with the driving examiner, complete with his clipboard, but sadly lacking the beige anorak and driving gloves I always imagine for them, after overexposure to Lee and Herring’s Fist of Fun at a formative age (I’ve had to fight the urge to shout ‘Are you a FOOL? Are you a STUPID FOOL! You CAN’T EVEN DRIVE!’ at Jane in our practice sessions, as I fear she wouldn’t be mollified by my explanation that such things were what passed for comedy in the nineties).
Meanwhile I retired to the steamy café over the road. I mean it was steamy as in the windows, not steamy as in a porn café – do you even get porn cafés? Maybe in Amsterdam, where they’re much more relaxed about such things. Here, there would probably have to be lengthy risk assessments completed about the dangers of boiling liquids and naked genitalia, not to mention the hygiene aspects. On reflection, it’s probably best if porn cafés aren’t a thing anywhere. You do get cat cafés, of course, although I wonder why you don’t get dog cafés, given that most cats actually hate people, whereas most dogs (with the exception of my elderly and grumpy Border terrier, Judgy Dog, but I’m pretty sure he’s part cat anyway) love people and would adore nothing more than a stream of strangers to scritch their ears and give them illicit cake under the table.
Obviously, I was musing to myself about cat/porn cafés (I suppose you could combine the two and just call them pussy cafés) to distract myself from dwelling on how on earth I’m old enough to have a daughter who’s on the brink of being able to drive, and even more terrifyingly will shortly be old enough to drink alcohol. Well, legally, I mean. In an actual pub. As a result of what I like to think of as my ‘liberal’ approach to parenting, or what Daily Mail readers would probably refer to as ‘lax’ parenting, I’ve been permitting Jane to experiment with sensible amounts of not-too-strong drink for a few years. By which I mean I let her take some cider to parties and pretend not to notice when she’s hungover to fuck the next day after getting rat-arsed on vodka and Mad Dog 20/20, which is apparently a thing among the youth again. Who knew? They have all sorts of exotic flavours now, though, like ‘electric melon’ instead of just the strawberry or peach that was available in my day. Was it strawberry or peach? Oh God, I can’t even remember, it’s so lost in the mists of time, now that I’m an ancient crone with a grown-up daughter. Just please, please don’t let her get knocked up for at least ten years. I’m so not ready to be Granny Ellen yet. Though my mother might finally keel over at the horrendous thought of being a great-grandmother! … But even that wouldn’t be enough to make up for granny-dom before fifty!
The growing up is all happening terribly fast, and it feels rather strange to think that soon, after so many years of the main focus of my life being keeping my children alive and fed, first one and then both of them will no longer be my responsibility. Before Christmas, we had all the stress of filling out UCAS forms and trying to pick courses and universities, when it only seems like about five minutes since I was doing that for myself. Well, I say ‘we’ had the stress of filling in forms, I had the stress of nagging Jane about it, and pleading with her to show it to me, and finally being told she’d sent it off without even letting me see her personal statement. She did eventually, grudgingly, tell me what she’d applied for and where, though. Her first choice is Edinburgh, which surprised me, as that’s where Simon and I went to university, so I thought she’d shun it on principle, but apparently it’s good for History and Politics (her current chosen course), and ‘It’s, like, really far away, Mum, so you couldn’t come and visit all the time.’
I got myself a nice cup of tea and a bun (oh God, I am practically a granny) and settled down to gnaw my nails and await Jane’s return. I wasn’t sure what outcome would be preferable, actually. Jane passing her test would mean she could give me a lift to the pub, and I wouldn’t have to drive her places, but Jane failing her test would mean that I didn’t have to share my car and wouldn’t have to lie awake at night imagining her trapped in a tangled heap of metal in a ditch. In truth, my faith in Jane’s driving abilities was formed when she was four and a half, and we’d visited my best friend Hannah, who had a little electric jeep for her children Emily and Lucas (who, helpfully, are also my children’s best friends) to play in. Peter and Jane had been desperately excited by this, and considered being given a shot in it to be the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to them.
Somehow, Peter managed to get the first go, to my apprehension, as he was only two and a half, but Hannah assured me he wouldn’t be able to get it off the drive. He managed splendidly, turning, reversing, and finally parking with a flourish. Then it was Jane’s turn.
‘I want Emily to come in with me too!’ Jane insisted, and so her friend duly hopped in the passenger seat.
‘This is so fun, Emily!’ squeaked Jane, slamming her foot on the accelerator and flying straight through the hedge as we hurtled into the street after her, Jane still completely oblivious to her Dukes of Hazzard-style exit from the driveway.
‘Oooh, look, Emily, it’s got a phone. Let’s pretend to phone Milly!’ babbled Jane, veering wildly back and forth across the road as I bellowed, ‘JANE! JANE! STOP! STOP!’ and attempted to throw myself in front of her, as Jane paid no heed to the road or me whatsoever, as she was ‘phoning’ Milly, while chattering to Emily, one hand casually on the wheel and her foot still firmly on the accelerator, the brake pedal a mere redundant piece of plastic as far as Jane was concerned.
My final anguished bellow of ‘JAAAAAAANE’ as she belted towards a very shiny BMW parked a few yards away from her perilous progress finally got through to her, and she turned around to say, ‘Yes, Mummy?’
Luckily, in the process of turning around, she took her foot off the accelerator and by dint of basically rugby tackling the fucking electric jeep, I was able to stop it in time before it ploughed into the shiny and doubtless hugely expensive Beamer. I’ve rarely been so relieved about anything in my life, as Jane crashing a car and causing extensive and expensive amounts of damage at the tender age of four would have given Simon endless ammunition in his ‘amusing’ remarks about ‘women drivers’ (this, obviously, was prior to me kicking him out of the car for being a condescending twat!).
I nibbled my bun and sipped my tea as the hour slowly passed. Seventeen years ago, it didn’t seem possible that I’d be sitting and waiting to hear if Jane had passed her driving test. What was I doing seventeen years ago? Apart from feeling old and thinking I was already a dried-up husk because I was the ancient and decrepit age of thirty-one, which now, with hindsight, seems utterly ridiculous. I’m forty-eight and look upon women of thirty-one as mere babies! They are but ingénues, so hopeful and young, with not the slightest idea of how much cronedom lies ahead of them, or just how much they yet to have dry up. They’re all hash-tagging madly on Instagram about things I don’t understand, like ‘bulletproof coffee’ and kimchi and starting podcasts. Anyway. Seventeen years ago. Baby Music. I used to go to Baby Music on Friday mornings. Every Friday morning, sitting in a circle on a hard, cold, church-hall floor, attempting to pin a furious and writhing Jane on my lap while clapping along with the other smiley-happy mummies to an irritating song about an old brass wagon.
What else was I doing? It’s all a bit of a blur, really. I walked a lot. I mean a lot. Hours in the park, pushing Jane on the baby swings, feeding the ducks, although of course now you aren’t meant to feed ducks bread, which means already I’m finding myself saying things like ‘In my day!’ like my granny used to, and I’m mildly terrified that the next step is that I’ll come out with some awful casual racism, and when I’m (rightly) upbraided for it I’ll brush it off by saying something terrible like, ‘But everyone said it in my day, dear.’ And if I do it in public, then someone might overhear and I’ll end up in some grim Daily Mail article about Political Correctness Gone Mad, and they’ll misquote both my age and the value of my house.
There was a lot of pureeing vegetables and carefully freezing them for Jane to reject. I gradually learnt that the more Annabel Bloody Karmel assured me that all children adored some revolting concoction she’d come up with, the more likely Jane was to point-blank refuse to try it. Finally, one day, after spending an hour coaxing Jane to try the revolting sludge I’d spent the previous two hours peeling, chopping, steaming and pureeing, seasoning it only with my fucking tears, I caught sight of Annabel’s beaming face on the cover of the book and something snapped. I hurled the damn book into the garden, then stormed after it and jumped up and down on top of it while screaming obscenities. I felt so much better for doing that, that I did the same to Gina Fucking Ford.
And then there was attempting to go back to work, when Jane was six months old, and feeling terribly guilty that I didn’t feel guilty about leaving her at nursery to be Brought Up By Strangers, as my mother put it, as she thought it would be far more suitable if I employed a full-time nanny like my sister Jessica did, instead of risking Jane learning Bad Habits from Common Children when she was at a formative age and thus could never be broken of them. My mother was vague on the subject of what Bad Habits she thought Jane was going to adopt, and even vaguer on the subject of how she thought I was going to pay for a full-time nanny. The bliss, though, of stepping through that door and handing Jane over to someone else for a few hours while I went and had adult conversations and used my mind and got to eat a sandwich without someone screaming for a bit and then spitting it over me when I gave them some.